Prison Architecture and Punishment in Colonial Senegal

(Hardback)

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For the past four decades, a rich scholarship has investigated the emergence of the prison in Europe and North America, mainly the connection between institutional architecture, techniques of social control, and mechanisms of discipline. Prison Architecture and Punishment in Colonial Senegal asks if these connections did exist in colonial Senegal since prisons in Africa had never been the focus of such scholarship. This book addresses three main themes. First, it analyzes prison buildings and their changing architectural forms throughout the colonial period to highlight how the French used prison architecture to control Africans. Second, it describes the connections between the internal layout of prison spaces and punishment to show how the design of prisons expressed the notions of punishment and reforms. The book also undertakes a critical assessment of inmates agency in reshaping the world of prisons in colonial Senegal. Finally, it discusses the legacy of colonial prisons in independent Senegal. By providing a comprehensive history of prison architecture in Senegal, the book helps insert Africa into a more global history by offering a uniquely comparative study of colonialism, architecture, and punishment.

Reviews

Dr. Dior Konates thoroughly documented book provides, for the first time, a comprehensive examination of the history of incarceration in Senegal from the colonial to the post-colonial eras. The book persuasively demonstrates the entanglement between architectural design and penal philosophy emphasizing the role of the prison as a site for the expression of state power and inmates resistance to it. By focusing on the built environment of prisons and inmates agency, Konate makes a valuable contribution to an important but neglected aspect of West Africa and Senegals colonial and post-colonial history. -- Cheikh Anta Babou, University of Pennsylvania
This is a rigorously researched and illuminating study of prison architecture in colonial and postcolonial Senegal and is an effective contribution to the literature on imprisonment in Africa, highlighting the architecture of repression and cultures of violence inherent in colonial prison systems. Konates analysis of the spatial locations and architectures of prisons delivers new insights into the punitive functioning of imprisonment and the weaknesses of colonial disciplinary regimes in Senegal. The focus on recovering prisoners voices is particularly welcome and nuances existing understandings of incarceration. -- Stacey Hynd, University of Exeter

Author Bio

Dior Konat is associate professor of African history at South Carolina State University.